The Dilemma of a Cuban Immigrant

I know of a Cuban who emigrated and now stands before a dilemma that few have in mind when they decide to settle in another country.

He is an excellent professional, also a wonderful person, who doesn’t decide to charge for his services what he usually charge on the country he now resides. And he can't make up his mind, especially when it comes to humble people... as were his own origins.

They are the values of solidarity, of humanism, that shaped his identity while he was growing up on here, and now he’s thrown into a deep contradiction: he left to live materially better, but to achieve it he must adjust to a market and a philosophy of life that, in turn, conspires against the well-being of others, who find it very difficult to pay for the services he offers.

This philosophy of life is the very core of the capitalist mode, to which must necessarily adjust if he intends, at least, to survive in the attempt to start a new life project. But sometimes the issues of the heart, of feelings, are not compatible with the money affairs.

Especially if, as is the case, you were born in Cuba and here you learned that it’s more normal to offer help to those who need it, even if they are stranger and that help is priceless, it’s for free; that if someone falls, you help; that you share what you have, not what you have to spare; that if you have

to get up early to accompany the neighbor to the polyclinic, you don’t hesitate…

It’s very difficult to make a clean slate of the essences of oneself, when, first with your family, then in the classroom and finally at the everyday school, you learned and made yours the slogan that first and foremost it’s a human being.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff